Biometric research indicated that customers of this clothing website did not like having to spend extra money to qualify for free delivery. This was supported by visitor surveys and customer interviews.
Hypothesis and Psychological Technique Applied
We decided that if we could motivate customers to add more items to their shopping bag to qualify for the free delivery, we could remove the negative emotions associated with it.
Humans are generally averse to losing an available benefit (Loss Aversion), and the ‘Psychology of Free’ is a powerful motivator. With this experiment, we intended to test the combination of these two forces.
Experiment
As customers added products to their basket, they were notified how close they were to receiving free delivery.
Once they passed this threshold amount, they were congratulated and told that Free Delivery had been applied to their purchase.
Left: Control.
Centre: Variation showing messaging before free delivery is applicable.
Right: Variation, showing messaging after free delivery is applied.
Results
From the observed data, we were able to see that the Variation showed a high probability of being better than the Control.
Learnings
Both conversion rate and average order value increased significantly through this experiment. By combining the psychology of free with loss aversion, we were able to encourage more customers on this website to spend a little bit more, and thereby get something they valued for free.
Download our CRO Experimentation Handbook
Want to read about our other experiments? The Experimentation Handbook is a collection of case studies of some of our best optimisation experiments, with details of the research and consumer psychology principles used.
